Overjoyed (Christine Kane)

I've always loved the week between Christmas and New Year's Day; very chill, peaceful, quiet.  It's not quite the respite it used to be, now that I'm older, not to mention retired... but I still use it to recalibrate from the holiday chaos to hanging new calendars in my kitchen as well as my home office.  

I've done lots of reading, made easy-peasy meals, caught up on some off-beat holiday movies, enjoyed phone calls with friends who live close by as well as those who reside across state lines.  Today was Garden Day, always a delight... and tomorrow I'll finalize the Caring Community newsletter and maybe even prepare my holiday cards for mailing.  It is all good... 💖

In these last few days of 2022, I am embracing my imperfections, in awe of my flaws, counting my blessings, and creating my vision of what I want in the next 365 days... for myself, for my community, and for the world around me.

From the ever-wise Donna Ashworth:

Why do we start a new year, with promises to improve?

Who began this tradition of never-ending pressure?

I say, the end of a year, should be filled with congratulation, for all we survived.

And I say a new year should start with promises to be kinder to ourselves, to understand better just how much we bear, as humans on this exhausting treadmill of life.

And if we are to promise more, let’s pledge to rest, before our bodies force us.

Let’s pledge to stop, and drink in life as it happens.

Let’s pledge to strip away a layer of perfection to reveal the flawed and wondrous humanity we truly are inside.

Why start another year, gifted to us on this earth, with demands on our already over-strained humanity.

When we could be learning to accept, that we were always supposed to be imperfect.

And that is where the beauty lives, actually.

And if we can only find that beauty, we would also find peace.

I wish you peace in 2023.

Everything else is all just a part of it.

Let it be so.

SONG:  Overjoyed by Christine Kane

BOOK:  How to Kiss the Universe: An Inspirational Spiritual and Metaphysical Narrative about Human Origin, Essence and Destiny by Jozef Simkovic  

POEM:  Imaginary Conversation by Linda Pastan

You tell me to live each day

as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen

where before coffee I complain

of the day ahead—that obstacle race

of minutes and hours,

grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not

live each day as if it were the first—

all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing

her eyes awake that first morning,

the sun coming up

like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee

with the small roar of a mind

trying to clear itself. I set

the table, glance out the window

where dew has baptized every

living surface.

QUOTE(S):  "At midnight on New Year's Eve, open your front door and back door, saying:  blow out the old, blow in the new, blow out the false and blow in the true.  So Mote It Be!"

"Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance." ~ Brené Brown

Yule (Winter Solstice Song) - (Lisa Thiel)

artist: George Wolfe Plank

Happy Yule!  I have always appreciated and been in awe of the Winter Solstice, but, unlike many dear friends, I have never actively celebrated it.  With my recent affinity for gardening leading me to Herbalism (what I like to call Kitchen Witchery), I am finding myself drawn to earth-centered beliefs and Pagan rituals.

I've been wanting to have My Sweet Babboo (a.k.a. four-year-old grandson Colin) over to view my holiday decorations but, through a series of best-laid-plans-gone-awry, it just hasn't worked out yet... until now, when the plan is for me to pick him up from preschool (which I do a few times a week anyway) this afternoon, bring him to my house for a few hours, and then deliver him home to Sarah... 😍  

I cannot wait to walk him through the house, spotlighting my small lighted tree (similar to the one my Mom made in her ceramics class in the '60s)... my dining room table (with vintage ornaments in a square glass vase)... my "candle tree", with presents underneath... my Santa collection, lovingly acquired over the decades (and which I haven't displayed the last few years)... lighting candles throughout... then putting the Netflix fireplace on my TV screen and turning down the overhead lights, enjoying a snack of hot chocolate and cookies, and talking about our holiday wishes (not just which toys Santa is bringing, but of experiences and love... 💖 )

Maybe I have high expectations for those upcoming few hours but, smart and thoughtful kiddo that he is, I think he will more than live up to them.  And, bonding time with my Snugglebunny:  Priceless!

P.S.  Had to share the below article, as I'm recently enamored with Ms. Renkl's writing and am, in fact, giving her book of essays to various of my special peeps this holiday season... 🎁

Falling a Little Bit in Love with the Dark by Margaret Renkl

Dec. 19, 2022

Ms. Renkl is a contributing [NYT] Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

NASHVILLE — This year the winter solstice arrives on Dec. 21 in the shank of the dark afternoon. Officially the first day of astronomical winter, the solstice is better known as the shortest day of the year. I prefer to think of it as the longest night of the year, for I am making friends with darkness.

For most of my life, I looked forward to the solstice because it signals a shift to longer days. I was never a fan of winter, and earlier sunrises and later sunsets always felt to me like a kind of compensation for the cold. But my heart has been thawing these past years, watching as winter becomes ever more fragile, its cold imperiled by the changing climate, its darkness by our own foolishness and fear.

With the arrival of LED lighting, which costs so little to burn, every house has become an island of illumination, every city a blazing forest fire of artificial light. In my own backyard, it’s hard to enjoy the full moon because so many of our neighbors now leave their lights on all night long. And that’s without the holiday displays, each one bright enough to guide an airplane from the sky and land it safely in the middle of our street.

This resolve to snuff out every shadow of night — I wonder how closely it might be linked to the metaphorical darknesses of our age. Discord, suffering and sorrow are everywhere, all much darker than any winter night, and tilting Earth is not to blame for them. It’s not hard to understand what’s really to blame: Media and political figures alike profit when we are angry or afraid.

Literal darkness is simple by comparison, but people inclined to flood their own yards with light for safety’s sake seem not to know how little safety they’ve provided themselves or what measures of actual safety they have closed off in the attempt. They will never know what dangers might lurk beyond their own little circle of light because they’ve created the very circumstances that prevent their eyes from adjusting to darkness.

This is the flip side of Willy Loman’s lament about the loss of sunlight — “The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard,” he says in “Death of a Salesman.” Willy’s trouble is the proliferation of apartment houses. Ours is the proliferation of LEDs. Willy’s garden languishes, and we can no longer see in the dark.

It has become fashionable in fall for people to decorate their front porches with pumpkins of all colors and sizes. In Middle Tennessee, we don’t get more than a few days of true fall weather anymore, and no one I know grows pumpkins, so these porchscapes, as they are called, are mostly aspirational. Less fall than faux fall. An Instagram season.

But the pumpkins are real, heavy and ripe. Pumpkin season used to run right up to Thanksgiving, but Halloween now marks the end of the porchscapes. Apparently taking their cue from the big-box stores, Americans have decided to hang their Christmas lights on the day after Halloween.

It’s almost always a mistake to feed wildlife, in part because feeding habituates wild creatures to our presence. Animals that are not afraid of us tend to come to a bad end at the hands of people who are afraid of them. But I couldn’t bear to see those perfectly good pumpkins, dozens of them, heading to the landfill, so I mentioned on WhatsApp that I thought our wild neighbors would welcome a pumpkin dinner once the pumpkins were no longer useful as decorations.

My human neighbors responded by bringing me trunkloads of pumpkins. Day after day I would find our front bench piled high, and day after day I would carry the pumpkins out back and tuck them up against the fence around the play yard we built to keep our dog out of the wildlife sanctuary that is the rest of this half acre. Every morning I walk down to look at the impromptu fencescape, delighting in each new sign that a raucous feast has been unfolding in our backyard after dark.

The party has been going on for weeks now. Some of the pumpkins have been rolled across the yard, to what purpose I can’t guess. Some of the first pumpkins to arrive are beginning to rot now, but others are perfectly clean inside, gnawed down to the rind. The hollows fill up with rain, a natural water source for thirsty wildlife.

Many creatures in this part of the world will eat a pumpkin: squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, birds and turtles by day; mice, deer, opossums, skunks, raccoons, foxes and coyotes by night. Heading out to check the mail, I have watched more than one squirrel spring from the center of a giant pumpkin, rocket-launched from deep within, at the sound of my footfall.

But I don’t know who’s been feasting at night. Nearly every potential pumpkin eater in the suburbs has been spotted in this neighborhood during the 27 years we’ve lived here, and it could be any of them. It could be all of them, one after another. It would be so wonderful if it was all of them.

Which beautiful mysteries are out there in the dark, living their hidden lives so near our own unshadowed lives? I could hang our old trail camera on a nearby tree and probably find out, but so far I haven’t even charged the camera batteries. Something is holding me back, and I’m not sure what.

It might be fear. It would be a thrill to discover some rare and elusive creature delighting in these donated pumpkins, but the reverse is also true. What if I peered at all the grainy trail-cam images and found only the solitary opossum who sleeps under our shed? What if the only thing I learned from the camera is that most of my treasured backyard neighbors have been pushed out by all the changes in this changing city?

I know that’s not true, at least not yet. I can see the coyotes and the foxes with my own eyes. I see the skunks and the raccoons. Every morning Rascal heads down into his yard to sniff the pumpkins through the fence, and some mornings he leaps back in alarm at the scent of what must surely be a predator. Even so, I am afraid the day is coming when they will all be gone.

So I am teaching myself to rest in uncertainties, to revel in the secrets of darkness. I welcome the hungry creatures, cold and wild, that find their way in the dark to this unexpected bounty, but I don’t need to know who they are. Let them live out their lives in mystery. Let the cold nights hold them. Let the cold nights hold me, too.

SONG:  Yule (Winter Solstice Song) by Lisa Thiel

BOOK:  A Light in Life:  Meditations on Impermanence by Mary Pipher

POEM:  Celebration by M.E. Hope

 

 There is a reason we save this time

 of the year for celebration,

 this time when we need sun or star or flame

 to take us through the axis tip;

 when we need snowfall and miracle

 and warmth and song to carry us through

 till spring.  There is a reason

 we search the sky, listening for wingbeat,

 verse, the sound of doves hovering

 in the shelter of pine. We look toward

 one another, rather than away,

 pull in toward the hearth

 the sturdy chair, take the arms of one

 so loved, we could not go on

 without them, and in this

 pause, we pull in the world.

 The long winter night fills us:

 a renewal, a radiance, a reason for waking.

QUOTE(S):  "Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, beckons us into the darkness, inviting us into the depths of ourselves and asks us, “What must you let die at this time? What is calling to you to be born? What is your next step?” ~ Wild Woman Magic

"May you find peace in the promise of the solstice night, that each day forward is blessed with more light.  That the cycle of nature, unbroken and true, brings faith to your soul and wellbeing to you.  Rejoice in the darkness, in the silence find rest, and may the days that follow be abundantly blessed." ~ Unknown

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar.“ ~ Margaret Atwood

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find, that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.“ ~ Wendell Berry

All I Want for Christmas (is World Peace) - (Timbuk3)

Fact:  The last time I posted here was August 22, 2022.  

Thought:  I will stop apologizing... to myself, as well as to whomever might be reading this blog.  

Intention:  I have vowed to post more often, starting today, with no obligatory schedule, because I love to write and I miss it when I don't.  So mote it be... 💖

Interesting in that, when I began this blog draft earlier in the week, I had written:  "My life is pretty d*mn amazing right now".  Whew, what a difference three days makes, right?  Yet I am improving my ability to channel my inner Kahlil Gibran, reminding myself that without sorrow we wouldn't know joy.  Family Drama:  normal.  Overwhelmedness (especially at this time of year):  typical.  Disrupted Sleep Patterns:  horrible during the pandemic, evened out, back to sporadic 3 a.m. two-hour bouts of reading until I get tired enough to try again.

However, I appear to uncharacteristically have my sh*t together this Christmas... and it's still 11 days away!  The house is decorated; I actually put out my Santa collection this year (which I hadn't for a few), and am so much enjoying the vibe as well as the stories behind each one.  Season's Greetings cards will go in the mail early next week.  (Most of the) Presents are wrapped.  My Spotify holiday playlist is in process of being created; then I will share.  This all feels too good to be true. Who am I and what have I done with Susan?!?  Will publish this post and read for a few hours until my modus operandi of panic and frenzy creeps back in (ha ha ha ha ha!)... 💞

In the meantime, some specific moments of loveliness (as well as hilarity):

~ We were invited to join Sarah and Colin, along with J (her boyfriend) and his four kids plus his sister and her daughter, as well as both sets of G families at the Oasis Church for their annual holiday lights extravaganza, complete with train ride... fake snow (Colin:  "it's just bubbles, Lala!)... old-school Frosty the Snowman movie projected on the building wall... popcorn/S'Mores/hot chocolate... and Christmas trivia.  Okay, so temps are still in the 70s-80s here; it's the Spirit that counts, right?... and our Caravan of Chaos had plenty of that... 🎄

~ A few nights later we went to Sarah's to assist in decorating her tree; more stories with each ornament:  the glitter-card-lace Taco Bell ashtray (Sarah's Girl Scout Troop creation, when they still allowed smoking in restaurants!)... Dad's Favorite Child (bought at Cracker Barrel decades ago on a trip to Atlanta for Christmas; yes, each of our three received one, and Rob's is black, to differentiate his from Eric's!)... a glass heart with Colin's handprint, which Sarah helped him make during the pandemic/Christmas 2020!.  The final touch was tinsel (which my mom loved and I always hated, because it made such a mess), and we had fun showing Colin how to gently separate two or three strands and place them at the end of a branch (my mom's modus operandi).  And, when we sat down to admire our handiwork, Sarah played two special songs on her phone:  My Way (my mom's all-time favorite), and Silent Night (my husband's dad's favorite carol).  Bliss!

~ My niece's partner is a kindergarten teacher, and she asked on Facebook for donations of books to her 20 students; pick a number and she would assign us a child, and we could choose from a pre-determined Wish List.  I offered up 8, I got Emmett ("a boy's boy", she said); her offerings were sweet abd thoughtful but, reading her description of his personality made me want to introduce him to the story of my favorite pacifist bull (noted below), so I asked L, if she deemed it appropriate, to please add it to her list.  Hard to believe it was published in 1936, 86 years ago!  Still so relevant and, because it's such a classic, I sent the hardcover edition... ☮

~ Hilarious meme:

Speaking of, I haven't yet had my annual viewing of the latter yet (the Joni CD was better than that d*mn garish necklace anyway... right, Emma?); also, did you know about The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later (a Diane Sawyer Special) on Hulu?  I highly recommend!

NR (Now Reading):  Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver; set in Appalachia, it's a modern re-telling of David Copperfield and, although only a third of the way through, I'm captivated!

SONG:  All I Want for Christmas (is World Peace) - (Timbuk3)

BOOK:  The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf (illustrated by Robert Lawson)

POEM:  Nest by Jeffrey Harrison

It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree

into the house and up on the stand

that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest

tucked among its needled branches.

Amazing, that the nest had made it

all the way from Nova Scotia on a truck

mashed together with hundreds of other trees

without being dislodged or crushed.

 

And now it made the tree feel wilder,

a balsam fir growing in our living room,

as though at any moment a bird might flutter

through the house and return to the nest.

And yet, because we’d brought the tree indoors,

we’d turned the nest into the first ornament.

So we wound the tree with strings of lights,

draped it with strands of red beads,

and added the other ornaments, then dropped

two small brass bells into the nest, like eggs

containing music, and hung a painted goldfinch

from the branch above, as if to keep them warm.

QUOTE:  "Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come." ~ Chinese proverb